Well that was fun :D

Warning, Warning, anti-book post!

So Christmas was a lot of fun this year. Christmas is always fun (see my post about why I love it soooooo much) but I had a great time this year. Here’s a few pictures and such.

 

I made a Beautiful cake for our Christmas get together at church on Wednesday, it was the nativity scene on chocolate cake. I love making cakes, but my favorite part is decorating them. This cake was cute, but it tasted soooo good! I always put a packet of instant pudding in with the mix and it makes it light and fluffy but dense and delicious at the same time. I made the frosting out of whipped cream cheese and black cocoa from King Arthur's Flour. Best. Cocoa. Ever.

I also made a  FANTASTIC cake for our party, it was shaped like a snowflake (we have a special pan) and I went to town on the decorations. I don’t have any special tools, either. This is home made butter frosting squeezed out of a plastic Ziploc bag!

We had our annual Christmas Eve party, at which mom broke out the eggnog. The kid’s batch and the Adults batch (adults has alcohol) lasted longer than I expected this time, and we had some leftovers for Christmas day and the day after. That was nice. I played Oh Holy Night on the piano (twice, at the request of Miss Pam), both times I messed up horribly. But I played great the day after! Such is the life and lies of an inanimate flying object, yes?

For Christmas you probably think that my list was filled with books, books, and books. Well it actually wasn’t, because I have enough books (see my tbr list at the bottom ;D) .  All I wanted was a digital camera (because I’ve been using the cell phone. Hence the craptastic photos I’ve been sharing with you.) and I just mentioned it once or twice. I kind of forgot to make a wish list this year. I was very focused on one thing: finishing mom and dad’s gift. I was so focused I almost forgot to go shopping for the girls!

I’d started this quilt for them in July, for their 23 wedding Anniversary and it was all done except the back. I’d run out of cash and couldn't buy any more fabric for the back, so I’d decided that we’d give it to them for their birthdays (which three days apart, with mine directly in the middle) but I never got around to it. So… Hannah and I stayed up on Christmas Eve until 2:30 in the morning hand-sewing and quilting this baby. It ended up beautiful, and mom and dad loved it. Every one of us kids (there’s four of us) designed a quilt square, even my 12 year old brother, and I sewed them together and embroidered our names on the squares. the rest of the squares were traditional patterns made with contemporary fabrics. It’s so colorful!!!

Every year we have a tradition: we get Christmas Pajamas on Christmas Eve. This year mom made us match. It’s the first time she did that. She picked flannel (my favorite fabric) nightgowns (my favorite type) that look like Laura Ingalls style (My favorite style) and the boys got matching colors. We put the things on and they were so warm! Hannah, my sister, came out and said “We match! we look like curtains, but we match!”

The boys tried the same stunt. It didn’t work.

Then we tried to get a good family picture for the next fifteen minutes while dad tried to figure out how to get the timer on the camera to work and get Ethan to make a real smile instead of some stupid facial expression. It took a while. I don’t think we ended up with a good one, just acceptable ones.

Ethan Claims he can’t smile. Liar.

Here’s me and my sisters. Yup. That’s us.

our tree on Christmas morning!

For Christmas I got a green sweater (favorite color!) and an orange one with a black shirt (because I’m going to CU next year), lots of chocolate (yessss!) a target gift card, Nutcracker body wash from Bath&Body works, a craft book about Embellishments, a new nutcracker for my collection, a few other various things, and my camera :D

The one I got is the Jack Sparrow one, 6th one from the left. Some of those on the mantel are mine, some are moms. But most are mine. You can click on the picture for a better view ;)

Then that night our extended family came up: My brother and his dad. They’re not actually related but we pretend we are. Because we’re cool like that.

Ian is hiding behind the singing snowmen. (Don’t ask me why.)

not sure what I was laughing at there.

 

who knows what he was excited about. He had a sugar high.

searching for a song on his phone.

one of those awkward pictures where you aren’t prepared for the camera and you can’t remember what you were talking about at the time.

We hung out Christmas night and the day after, saw Sherlock Holmes (That movie was awesome!!!! If you haven’t seen it, go!), shot off home made rockets, played music on his guitar until 1:30 in the morning, and had some great laughs. As you can see below, Carly is cracking up.

So we had fun. Now I’m feeling the after Christmas crash. Maybe I could read for a while, considering my TBR list… or knit.

this is my “don’t mess with me” look.

oy.

Anyway.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!!!!

~H